


I'm walking the long road, watching the sky fall

by MelodyGarnet



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 05:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6181696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodyGarnet/pseuds/MelodyGarnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as he got the idea of switching the Night Howler bullets with berries, they were found out. No time. They didn't have time.When the bullet hit, Nick wishes he'd found the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Just as he got the idea of switching the Night Howler bullets with berries, they were found out. No time. They didn't have time.When the bullet hit, Nick wishes he'd found the time. 

 

The Night Howlers worked quickly. He tried to hold them back, he groaned and curled in on himself, but they were too strong, worked too fast.

'Nick?', he heard Judy ask and oh, no. Judy. He knew what would happen if-when- he went savage. He'd hurt Judy, he would murder her, he would- oh stars, would he eat her? Please, no. Not that. Not her. His first true friend- _Prey_! What?

_Prey_.

No, she's Judy!  

_Prey_!

He couldn't- It was so hard- When did he start moving? When did he allow his body to move? Judy sounds so scared. She's pleading. No! No, not my Judy. Stop! I said, stop! She's my friend, please.

_Prey_. 

Friend!

_Prey_!

FRIEND! FRIEND, FRIEND, FRIEND!

_PREY_! He lunged, chased after her, couldn't hold himself back. He's caught her leg, he's biting down, please, no! Please... Please... she's MY _FRIEND_!

 

With that last thought, something clicked and Nick slipped under.

______

When the ZPD arrived at the museum, what they found was a petrified Bellweather and her lackeys, and a pit splattered with blood and bits of fur later confirmed to be Officer Judy's. The mayor's presence was brought into question- the ZPD weren't that stupid- but they could't pin their suspicions down. Untill, amid the upset museum props, a small orange pen was discovered and the recording played out. Apparently, Judy had recorded her suspicions, what she'd found out AND what Bellweather had confessed to on that carrot pen of hers. Smart bunny. Bellweather was arrested, of course, and an antidote was found in record time.

What the pen had also recorded was Nick being hit by a Night Howler Bullet, Nick turning feral, Nick chasing a frightened, pleading Judy. Nick biting her. Judy falling silent. Bellweather and her henchmen scuttling back as Nick- strong in his wildness- jumped out of the pit, snarled at the three baddies and dragged his prey away with him. Once Bellweather had confessed, she told the ZPD what had happened to Judy.

They caught him skulking in an alleyway three days later, searching through trashbags for food. No body was found. He was put on trial for murder of an officer the very next day, as soon as an antidote was administered.

Nick didn't fight it. He didn't remember anything once he'd stopped fighting the Night Howlers, and the circumstantial evidence was condemning enough. The trial hurt more than anything. They played the recording- twice. With every plea, every breath, every scream of Judy, Nick curled into himself. He guessed people were right after all; he did deserve to be muzzled. What kind of animal was he, that he'd hurt and killed his best friend? He didn't remember anything, but the recording made him wish he did. It couldn't be worse than what he kept imagining, could it?

 

Once the trial was over and he was imprisoned, Nick stopped caring. He ate only fruit-no blue berries, though, and not a lot of anything else either. Seeing any prey eating carrots in the cafeteria made him tremble. No one talked to him -the only predator gone savage to actually kill someone revolted and scared even the biggest predator in the yard- and he was fine with that. Any news that seeped into the prison he evaded. Outdoors time he spent sitting in a corner and looking at the sky. Nights he spent with his paws around his ears, or he curled his tail to restrain his legs, or he bit down on his own tongue- not that it made a difference. He heard Judy's pleas anyway. He chased her anyway. He murdered her anyway.

Those seven days, no one hated him as much as he did himself.

And then some animals in suits came and talked to him. Or at him, rather. They just talked and talked, and an exhausted Nick made the right noises, and signed some paper at the end. Nothing of what they said had registered, so Nick was entirely unprepared to be set free in the early morning of the tenth day since he'd killed Judy, with a bag of clothes and a twenty dollar meal ticket to some dingy highway restaurant.

 

He didn't have anyone to go to. He didn't have anything to support himself. He didn't have anywhere to go. He walked through the almost deserted streets of zootopia-muzzle down, so no-one would recognize him- and made his way to his old bridge. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Nick arrived at the bridge, there were bits of police tape all around the little park: ribbons of yellow and black peeking out from between patches of grass and half buried under kicked-up dirt. The whole place smelled a variety of animals and there was a muddle of footprints. A ZPD forensic unit? How had they found his place?

More importantly, what had they found?

Rainclouds had been steadily covering the sky and he would be drenched if he didn’t find cover soon, but Nick stayed outside anyway. He didn’t want to go inside in case… in case. He didn’t have the energy to go elsewhere either. He sat down outside with his back to a tree across the bridge’s tunnel, curled his tail around his knees and closed his eyes.

Nick hugged close his plastic bag of belongings with the single meal ticket inside and hunched over it. To protect it from the coming rain, of course.

The rain set in soon enough, but it didn’t irritate him. It soothed him and reminded him of a happiness that was now so far away. His mom was in love with the rain. “It turns all the harsh things in the world soft, Nicholas”, she’d once said on one of her few days off. She’d sipped tea, then had sighed and recited from her favourite book:  “The gutters become rivers and the different materials of the surrounding rooftops are wood and tin and stone xylophones. And when the storm is passed every sound and echo is gentled still by the water on every surface. Every drip off a roof or drainpipe is a staccato reminder of the veil of water that passed over the city and coolly but lovingly hushed its buildings, its vehicles, its animals for a precious few moments.”

His mother’s voice weaved a melody in his head, its rising and falling accompanying the tears that welled up and rolled off his cheeks. Judy. _Judy_.

____________

“Nick?”

The fox looked up, then shot to his feet. Judy almost flinched away at the abrupt movement. She looked concerned: “Are you okay?”

Nick scrambled back against the tree, looking for an escape route- an ironic mirror of Judy fleeing him just ten days ago, _had she been this scared too? God, he was a monster. He’d gone insane. He was_ -

Judy stepped closer. Nick made for the tunnel under the bridge- he brushed against her outstretched hand, her fur was soft and **_real_** , _how is that possible_?-  and hid in the recently dug nest in the middle of the tunnel. His fur was all puffed up.

Wait. What? This nest hadn’t been there before. How had he known it was there?

It smelled like- like _Judy_. Like Judy and Nick, together. _Oh stars, what was going on_?

Judy sighed the fox’ name, then gingerly crawled into the nest. Her leg was bandaged, was she okay? Nick was examining her leg before he knew it, making space for her to stretch her legs. Judy lay her paw on his shoulder to calm him. His fur lay back down.

“I’m okay, Nick. I shouldn’t have been walking on it so soon and I may have escaped from the hospital rather than being checked out, but it’s okay. I’m okay. I wanted to find you before the paps know that you’ve been released.”

Nick was confused. “I’m confused, Judy. What’s going on?”

Judy told him. He’d turned savage, but not violent towards Judy. Instead, after the first bite (which had scared the bunny so much she’d fainted), he’d protected her from Mayor Bellweather as if she were a part of his skulk and had brought the passed-out Judy to his favourite haunt under the bridge. There, he’d dug a nest for them to hide in- he’d been one overprotective fox, Judy joked- and had provided for her with what food he could forage. Any time she’d tried to leave, he’d come back in time to stop her. Her wound had become infected, however, and in Nick’s desperation to find something, anything that could help his feverish friend he’d be gone longer and longer and had become incautious enough to get caught.

“You wouldn’t leave long enough for me to drag myself to rescue before you’d come back with some food and usher me back inside. But then you were suddenly not coming back. I don’t know how long it took me to figure out. A day, maybe. I wasn’t all there, what with the fever. But, yeah, eventually, I caught on. I started crawling away. It was slow, but I found help eventually. They started to work on getting you proved innocent of animal slaughter from the minute they realized it was me- that's why the ZPD was here. That took about a week. And they got me to hospital, of course, for the leg.”

Nick sighed in relief and hugged Judy. A mountain of guilt slid from his shoulders and the vice around his heart loosened. The bunny hugged him back, hushing his whimpers. Huh. When had he started crying again? “There there, now. It’s all right. You foxes,” she teased, “always so emotional.”

“Oh stuff it, Carrots”, the emotional fox grumbled back. He sniffed and stopped crying eventually.

__________

They were silent awhile, until: “Why were you so spooked? At seeing me, I mean. That I was alive after all was all over the news and the talk of the town, but you looked like you didn’t know why and how you’d been proven inno…cent…. Um…”. Judy’s voice petered out as Nick started to become more and more flustered.

“I wasn’t really… paying attention to anything”, Nick explained reluctantly. He looked away from Judy’s violet eyes. He didn’t want to admit how out of sorts- who was he kidding- no, how _heartbroken_ and _ashamed_ he’d been of killing his friend, even if he’d been turned savage against his will. “I was pretty out of it, because I was… I didn’t want to hear any news or read any papers, because those first few days all they talked about was that I’d… No-one talked to me either.” He couldn’t get the words out.

“So, you didn’t know until you were released? That’s awful, Nick. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I dragged you into this and-” The bunny was pulling back from Nick, moving to the farthest side of the nest. She was starting to blame herself, Nick just knew it, and he wasn’t letting that happen. He abruptly put his paw on her mouth. Judy jumped, then glared. _If looks could kill._

“If you’re gonna be talking like an idiot, I don’t wanna hear it. It’s not your fault. You were doing your job- above and beyond. Yeah, I got roped into it, but what happened- that I turned savage and all- is not your fault. It’s _Bellweather’s_ evil maniacal villain plot. Not yours.” 

“Sheep”, he continued in the overly patient voice of a parent explaining things to a rather slow cub, “Not bunny. Sheep” Thumbs down. “Bunny.” Thumbs up. “Evil. Cop. Simple as that.”

“You’re a clown.”

“Excuse you, I’m a fox.”

“Wait a minute”, Judy interrupted. She looked thoughtful. _Oh-oh_. “Even if you didn’t realize _during_ your sentence that you were innocent, you _had to_ when you signed your release forms. They should have explained everything to you, and made sure you were clearheaded. They can’t make you sign forms when you’re in emotional distress _or_ distracted. That’s the rule. They could have made you sign anything! You could have signed something saying you wouldn’t prosecute the justice for prejudiced and hasty judgment or false imprisonment!”

“Ummmm”, the wily fox oh so cleverly evaded. Judy’s violet eyes narrowed suspiciously. She looked both like an overprotective cop and an indignant friend. Or maybe an indignant cop and an overprotective friend. Either way, she looked like a scheming bunny ready to kick some butt.

_She looked like Judy in all her bunny cop glory. In fact,_ Nick thought fondly, _she looked just like she’d had at the beginning of their case._

And then Nick thought: _Oh no._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> italics is the savage part of nick taking over
> 
> NOT FINISHED  
> FIX IT TO FOLLOW 
> 
> lyric from The Death of A Bachelor by Panic! At The Disco


End file.
